01. Dark Days02. The Cost03. Eulogy04. Not Welcome05. Pull The Knife06. My Demons (Acoustic)07. Ten Years In Flames08. The Hounds09. Fuck The Fence10. My Demons11. Violent As Violence Can Be

Brass metal, eh? Usually when a band creates a faux-genre name to describe the music they play, it generally means there's some gimmicks afoot. Here's where we usually throw a curve ball at you, and try to describe how such-and-such a band is actually something special. Unfortunately, that isn't the case with Fallstaf; it's a fairly boring band which uses the presence of a trombone to give their otherwise unimpressive music some kind of personality.

If there's any band that deserves it's own moniker of "brass metal", it's Diablo Swing Orchestra. Fallstaf is no Diablo Swing Orchestra. It's a pretty basic hardcore/crossover type sound; shouty vocals & primarily chugging, rhythm focused guitars. Despite that sound being fairly run of the mill, it really doesn't need the trombone, yet they seem to try and make the trombone the lynchpin in their music, it just doesn't work. The thing is, they don't seem to write as a cohesive unit, it sounds like they came up with the riffs, vocals, drums, bass etc, realized how generic it sounded, then slapped some trombone in there. Very rarely does it not sound completely out of place in a really obtrusive way, or just sit in the background aimlessly. Fallstaf is a band that added all the extra bells and whistles in all the wrong places.

The funny thing is, Fallstaf in it's most basic form doesn't sound all that bad. In fact, if they put more time into the riffs instead of trying to crowbar some unnecessary elements in, they might actually sound like a cool crossover act. Hell, they might even get away with stealing more riffs from High On Fire from time to time - "Pull The Knife" sounds a little too suspiciously similar to "Waste Of Tiamat" to not raise a few plagiarism alarms.

Despite the fact that Bastard Sons Of A Pure Breed is a pretty weak album, I wouldn't be so quick to completely write off Fallstaf; they've got a few rough ideas that don't sound entirely bad, they just need A LOT of work.

Heard a few songs on YT. Basically, they took some generic HC riffs and somehow squeezed otherwise totaly unnecessary trombone in their songs.
It's like taking a Hatebreed songs, putting a nonsensical saxophone in them, and calling the band "jazz metal".

@Doc Godin: If there's any band that deserves to be called brass metal, it's Pastors of Muppets, a cover band that was a big hit a couple of times over at Hellfest, and they played metal classics using only brass instruments... well, and a drum kit of course. Now, that is brass metal.

I.

----
No friends for playing games
No foes who scorn my name
Computerized machines of steel and rust
/---/
No friends in my house on Mars
No foes in my house on Mars
I was born in my house on Mars
I will die in my house on Mars
-- Ayreon - My House on Mars